Question about the economy

[Shadow_runner]

It's not the amount I am talking about, it's the only 'need' those to do a hydro run.

 

I don't want to go into too much detail, as you can't post game secrets in the forum. But you 'need' more than s2e's for a hydro run.

 

That you need more than that for a hydro run, means your storage has to store 'other' stuff. I was attempting to be subtle in my attempt to undermine the in my view the silly suggestion of limited storage.

 

[Shadow_runner]

Ok, first, I am a pro market guy, so I do not favour ideas that limit the ability of people to place items in storage, rare or otherwise.

Regarding the need for new players to keep the economy going, this is sort of like creating a ponzi scheme. Those ne wplayers will eventually become pr0s, and will need even more n00bs to sell their stuff to, and so on.

 

Now, there are two ways (that I think of) that can improve the economy somewhat:

1. Increase the consumption via a higher breaking rate and new one time use items (such as the horse whistle).

2. Have the player based cities, which will require huge amount of resources to build, upgrade and maintain.

 

Most fighters are opposed to the higher breaking rates, so the only viable solution is having the player absed cities, but that can't be done very soon, because we'd first need to switch to the new engine, so it might take 2 years or possibly more until we have that.

 

If your a pro market guy, why do you have NPC's buying unlimited amounts of stuff? Regardless of supply or demand.

 

I understand that you want too take items out of the game. There are other ways of doing that, via the gods. For example.

 

Perhaps, adding a device for blessings. The priest accepts some items, in return you get a blessing. Or each month, the 'church' has a fund raiser. Needs items for poor, army, etc... Anyone not donating the required amount might lose a rank. (Just some ideas.)

 

City sounds interesting, will wait and see how that works.

[Khalai]

Already thought about it.

 

I've made hydro runs with items I've made from scratch - note that for a hydro run you only need 30 s2e since they don't stack. For these items I doubt I ever had a need for more then 5000 emu. Thats because I mix on site and just store the bars - with an EMU of 2 they are easy to carry from the cave and don't take much place in storage.

 

 

You only need 30 s2e's to make a hydro run? I don't believe a word of it.

 

Actually, it is quite possible to do hydro run with only 30 swords and 1 pickaxe, if you can dodge/ignore yetis and fluffies on the map. If you don't know how, it does no mean, it can't be done. When it's peace or no drop day, you can try it

 

And do not even think about lowering my ranks at my gods, I worked my ass to get to rank 5 in Elandria, not quite cheap thing to do, not mentioning engineering god, who is extortionistic one What about people, who leave the game for few weeks or month? Should they be punished for that?

[Shadow_runner]

Actually, it is quite possible to do hydro run with only 30 swords and 1 pickaxe, if you can dodge/ignore yetis and fluffies on the map. If you don't know how, it does no mean, it can't be done. When it's peace or no drop day, you can try it tongue.gif

 

And do not even think about lowering my ranks at my gods, I worked my ass to get to rank 5 in Elandria, not quite cheap thing to do, not mentioning engineering god, who is extortionistic one smile.gif What about people, who leave the game for few weeks or month? Should they be punished for that?

 

In a word, no. People who are not logged on are not counted, this would also apply too the storage costs. If your not logged on, you don't get charged.

[Khalai]

Actually, it is quite possible to do hydro run with only 30 swords and 1 pickaxe, if you can dodge/ignore yetis and fluffies on the map. If you don't know how, it does no mean, it can't be done. When it's peace or no drop day, you can try it tongue.gif

 

And do not even think about lowering my ranks at my gods, I worked my ass to get to rank 5 in Elandria, not quite cheap thing to do, not mentioning engineering god, who is extortionistic one smile.gif What about people, who leave the game for few weeks or month? Should they be punished for that?

 

In a word, no. People who are not logged on are not counted, this would also apply too the storage costs. If your not logged on, you don't get charged.

 

But this would require massive database of every player, and some mechanism to count, whether he is online and for how long, to sum this time and decide if he is subject of charge or not. And with doubtful effect. So the ratio of price/efficiency is low...

[Entropy]

If your a pro market guy, why do you have NPC's buying unlimited amounts of stuff? Regardless of supply or demand.

 

Because the laws of supply and demand have to be tweaked in a MMO to accomodate for all kind of things that do not happen in real life.

[Shadow_runner]

If your a pro market guy, why do you have NPC's buying unlimited amounts of stuff? Regardless of supply or demand.

 

Because the laws of supply and demand have to be tweaked in a MMO to accomodate for all kind of things that do not happen in real life.

 

Fair enough, I am not going to argue with the guy who has all the facts and figures in front of him and knows where the goal is.

[popeye]

Fair enough, I am not going to argue with the guy who has all the facts and figures in front of him and knows where the goal is.

So wise for so few years.

[Silvatica]

...as soon as a good day for alching comes up I will do my best to lower that amount alot....

 

BUT

 

- Have a limit in total number of items in storage or a limit in EMU stored at storage. That way no one can hoard into storage and are forced to sell the items that is just saved for a special day when alching is profitable and they want to sit and make items for the whole day.

 

 

Sorry. Now or never, as you're wishing to force on everyone else. Perhaps a mod could do a clean for you to make it less painless... and half all your experience as you wanted, er, suggested.

 

 

-------------------

 

 

Now, much of this was said before, but because they were significant points you chose instead to peck at other insignificant things instead.

 

Even with the 1 million gc for a useless 50k storage:

 

(1) IEDP perk rendered useless as keeping a food supply just got near well impossible. That's brought up in particular because it costs pp's, but keeping a supply of any useful food (toadies, fps) has been rendered impossible as well. Many have 50k emu in food stock alone, which doesn't take long to use and thus requires constant resupplying. A large stock of food is pretty much a necessity in this game, and you'd have people relegated to food that might last 2-3 hours.

 

(2) Any special mixer day such as Joule and Scholar day may as well be taken out of the game completely, as it will be impossible to get any benefit out of them.

 

(3) That iron ore you're currently trying to rip off people at a measly 2.5 each would be upwards of 10gc each minimum with this, as noone would be stocking it to sell. They'd not have the room to stock it. Schmurk can turn his market site off, stocking to sell to other people will be a thing of the past. The only thing that keeps good sales between players going is storage.

 

 

1, 2) Actually for joule day you could for example make HE from scratch in old trassian cave and get about 1KHE/h (and less now when that cave is gone) but still a lot of good use for joule day without having to have 50K food in storage - I am even unsure it its even possible to use 50K food on one day. I think its storage for several days - don't think I ever used more then 10K food during a EL day.

 

3. Actually the harvester teams that sell in the marketplace on the forums are setting a price on iron ore. One team recently sold iron ore for 2 gc each. So those that bought from them can sell to me with a profit if they want. So no, my prices for buying ain't the best but if you look at bots so are many buying for lower that what I pay so they are actually not so bad as you think. Note that offer for fox furs is very competitive.

 

I've read economics at a university so I know about how supply and demand moves the price and how the economy works. If the price on iron ore suddenly would increase to 10gc everyone would start harvesting iron ore and the price would go down. Even at 5gc the number of people havesting iron ore will increase a lot and it will help to keep the price down so no reasonable person would pay 10 gc for iron. It might go up to 4 gc but I think that is more because so many wants to buy nexuses with bars and need iron ore for that.

 

BTW your wish that some mod should take away my stuff seams very strange - trying to intimidate me since you have no real arguments is not a good way to present your opinion its the bullys way of doing things - why don't you try and give good arguments for why gigantic unlimited storages really are needed ? Preferable some that are based on any type of facts of what players need instead of what some players have that they don't need ?

 

I've never seen any reason as to why the storage should be unlimited. Pure economics tells one that when there is an ambundance of items the price goes down - so low that the price becomes less than the price to make new items. This will then make it impossible for new-commers to the game to make a lot of money - unless they basically sell to NPCs.

 

As an experience I decided to try and use less storage and I now use very much less storage - without it affecting my badly in any way. Didn't really need the stuff I sold. The only thing I really see is that I now has a lot more money after selling off items I really had no need for. Sold items for over 100K - flowers I picked for experience and animal stuff I will never use like antlers and meat but also made essence and bars of all ingredients sold some of the excess essences I never use - so nothing I sold was very valueable - but a lot of items sum up to a lot of money. So with all the new cash I have a lot of money to buy new items of interest for me.

 

Of course any step to put a maximum number of EMU on storage should be done in steps so that everyone has ample time to sell off the things they don't need or use them for the things they where harvested for. If done right everyone should get ample warning in good time about the EMU cap and be given a chance to buy more storage and also to sell off or use up the items in storage. First step is to chance storage to tell how much people use, second step is to come up with a max storage and a way to buy more storage and third would be warn people if they exceed max storage and fourth step the game can start to make it impossibel to put things into storage as long as the max size is exceeded. In time people will learn to remove 'junk' from storage to have place for the things they need. So noone has to one day go to storage and find a lot of items missing.

 

Putting in a EMU cap will help Entropy know how much of each item are really needed in the game and not hoarded without any real intentions of being used and thus give better statistics of how to tweak the game to improve gameplay. For example how big should the chance of making an EFE when making an FE be ? If people hoard EFE - Entropy might lower the chance of making an EFE and thus the ones that hoard the EFE make money when the EFE price goes up. The same really applies to any resource like silver where should the resource be located and should too easy resources be moved or not ? If enough people hoard silver - the most easily accessable resource will of course be removed. Without correct stats these tweaks will not improve gameplay - they will instead make the game less fun when resources are removed.

 

The best capacity for max EMU or how many special items the storage can hold I don't know - maybe for EMU it should be 100 000 instead of my example of 50 000 and for special items 50 instead of 25 - but I'm sure if Entropy can use his powers and actually look at how much people on average in the game has - he can come up with some round numbers that most will find acceptable.

Edited January 18, 2009 by Silvatica

[Ateh]

wasn't storage capacity increased last year to cope with the new skills that came into the game such as engineering and tailoring ?

 

I doubt ive even got 100k combined in my storage cos thats just the way I play EL but try speaking to someone who is serious about levelling tailoring & engineering and potions to see if they think 100k storage space is sufficient lol

 

I mean have you seen what it takes to make Mule food ? its just not practical to haul that shit around from flower to flower trying to make it

 

Plus , not meaning to be offensive but just because you read economics at university doesn't mean your right about this lol

 

''INTELLECTUAL CAPACITY IS NO GUARANTEE AGAINST BEING DEAD WRONG'' - Carl Sagan

[Ermabwed]

I don't know why the talk of limiting storage keeps going on after the boss said it wouldn't happen.

[Eugenia]

Unfortunately the new ideas on the economy of few complicate the life to many.. how will we have our experiences if are not almost found more stoneses ?

Hi

[Zlatinho]

please eugenia, use a good english, i cant understand what you wrote in the post

-Zlat-

[Drue]

Been a long time since I've posted anything, and I don't play much regularly anymore due to RL concerns, but...

 

It seems to me that a lot of this economic debate is silly. EL has a pretty well managed economy. Prices haven't changed much on most items (with some fluctuations, of course) since I disappeared 6 months ago. There's no massive, runaway inflation. There's no insane volatility. EL's pretty stable. I've seen *much* worse.

 

Every MMO has these threads, it seems.. At least every one that I've played. And generally, they all boil down to "I'm pissed because I can't afford teh-uberist widgets right now!!!!" And then a few, more rational minds, getting into a bunch of economic theory and trying to explain things to the others.

There's also always a set of "real life examples" vs the "you can't compare RL to IG" statements.

 

Well, you can, and here's the crux of this little post of mine... I can't afford a ferrari. Not *right now*. If I went and got a job, and saved up my cash for long enough, I could eventually. So could every one of you. It's a small point, but an important one.

 

What the real issue boils down to is "Patience vs. Opportunity Cost". Want to be one of the top 10 players? Be ready to pay the opportunity cost, and be ready to be really patient. It'll take you thousands, if not tens of thousands, of hours worth of *work*. Not just "play".. not just combat training, but *work*. Putting in the time you need to get the skills, get the stuff, and gain the knowledge of the best ways to do everything you need to do. That includes harvesting, alching, whatever. Whatever you need to do to accomplish the goal.

 

Just like buying that ferrari. Sure, you can live in Mom's basement and eat ramen noodles and work at Wal-Mart for $7 an hour for several years till you've saved up enough cash.. or you can go to college, get a degree, get a high-paying job, and buy it. Either way, you're still putting in the work. You're still paying the opportunity cost.

 

The only things in EL that you can't get are things that don't exist in the game. Everything else is obtainable, it just requires work. If you really want it, put in the work. If it's not worth the work to you, then you obviously don't really want it that badly. This is life, be it Real Life or EL Life. Set your goals, save your money, work forward, and prosper. And try to have some fun while you do.

 

It ain't that complex.

[Burn]

Think you missed the point completely.

 

It's not a matter of "can't afford", those kinds get ignored anyway. People have proven the point of earning your way repeatedly in game, and that same response is told to anyone who whines about not being able to afford something. You hit on nothing new there.

 

 

It's a matter of ingredients for an item costing more than the actual item, which leads to noone making that item. Particularly manufacturing skill items.

 

The problem isn't people not willing to earn their way up, it's people who actually make the items not wanting to spend on ingredients to use them to make something that has a value less (sometimes much so) than the individual ingredients could be sold for. Why make an item that sells for 40k out of ings that cost 55k?

 

Quite a number of items are at this point now, and it's making some items become close to impossible to get hold of. Alembics and vial molds for example are in an all-time low, people begging at all times of the day every day for one or the other. EFE cost (and apparent rarity) has less people willing to make them. Since they break relatively easy, a constant supply of those two items is needed, but that supply has dried up.

 

That's just one example, of which I'm more familiar with. A fighter would probably better tell about a lot of the gear, but primarily manufacturing items.

 

Your Ferrari... would you buy all the individual parts to it at way over the cost of buying the car whole, then put it together (with the chance of actually losing the parts, every single one, in the process)? You'd rather buy the car whole which costs less and no chance of losing the parts putting it together. That's the manuer situation for the most part, not willing to waste those (when they can be found) to risk losing them, only to find out it's impossible to sell at anything even close to breaking even.

 

If a manuer does put something together that includes a stone or EFE or other expensive ingredient, they'll likely keep it for themself rather than put it on the market and lose money.

 

Daily life, a company buys individual pieces/ingredients, puts them together to form a product, then sells that product at a price that provides a profit. Or go out of business. The manu situation is the exact opposite, where most everything causes loss with noone willing to pay more to make those things profitable, or even worth making at a break even point.

Edited January 19, 2009 by GoodDay2Die

[Drue]

Think you missed my point completely too, GoodDay2Die, but I'll clarify.

 

My point is simply that everything has an "opportunity cost" associated with it, and that cost is simply "what you must go through to obtain it".

 

If, to take my ferrari example, buying individual parts and assembling the ferrari, with chances of breaking stuff and having to replace it... well, if it was the only way to get that ferrari, and it was important enough to me, sure, I'd do it. That process would then be a part of the ferrari's opportunity cost.

 

If you need vial molds and alembics, and there isn't a readily available supply of them to be purchased, then one must either a) make them yourself, and all the OC that this involves, or be willing to supply materials/GC to others who can make them for you. Which, again, is an opportunity cost.

 

Experiential economics are a bit different from market economics. In EL, a game, the only "market economics" that really come into play are a) Ent's cash income from the game vs Ent's expenses for servers/bandwidth/development time/etc. While the "in-game economy" makes attempts to *simulate* a market economy, it can only do so in a fashion reflected in the experiential economy. Experiential economies deal pretty much solely with Opportunity Cost vs Desired Ends.

 

Nobody *needs* anything in EL. They *want* stuff. They want things that are needed to achieve their desired ends. Those things, and the effort of their acquisition, are their opportunity cost. What else you could be doing instead of pursuing those particular ends. If nobody makes vial molds because they are not cost effective, either pay the people who can more, or just buy the vials. It's all the opportunity cost of your pursuit of potion making skills, and OA levels as a result.

 

Sure, the notion of the ingredients costing more than the end product sells for isn't common in the "Real World".. but it does happen. The Xbox 360, for example... Microsoft lost darn near $100 a unit on every sale of that game console. Why'd they do it then? Because it represents a long-term strategic investment in developing a new market for them that could, eventually, prove quite profitable. Why sink craptons of GC and time and effort into building up your Manu skill? Because it's a strategic investment in your character that might, at some point, prove profitable... either in terms of GC or capacity.

 

It's not a flaw in the game economics... it's just a conflict between people's desires for an end and their willingness to pay the opportunity cost to reach that end.

 

That was my point.

[nathanstenzel]

Sure, the notion of the ingredients costing more than the end product sells for isn't common in the "Real World".. but it does happen. The Xbox 360, for example... Microsoft lost darn near $100 a unit on every sale of that game console. Why'd they do it then? Because it represents a long-term strategic investment in developing a new market for them that could, eventually, prove quite profitable. Why sink craptons of GC and time and effort into building up your Manu skill? Because it's a strategic investment in your character that might, at some point, prove profitable... either in terms of GC or capacity.

I am manu 79 (ranked #13 for the game). The only profits in manu seem to be in helping the game get more hydro bars, which is not really a profit from the manu itself in most cases. There are a few that make some money off of rare mixes on great swords and expensive armor, but to do this, they ruin the prices for everyone else by underselling their excess items. You think there is an investment? No. Just ruining the market on top of ruining the market and manufacturers going out of business or playing "hermit" like I did for about a year and not doing business with Anyone because it was not worth my time.

 

To make things worse, it seems to me that there have not been enough steel bars on the market lately. Me and a few other people have been competing for the steel bars and now some people that I was buying from on a regular basis has started to keep them for their own uses. This probably means that the price for steel bars will go up even more which means the finished goods should go up in price again, but let's face it, they won't for some time.

 

By the way, mentioning XBox 360??? That is totally irrelevant. XBox 360 is a Platform. You need it for other things you want (games). They sell the console at a loss because they want to lure you in to overcharge you for the games. There are no items in EL that require another thing to be of use else than in the world of ingredients...which are worth more individually than as a finished item. A game console is worth more combined than individually. You can't play a game without the console and a console without a game is worthless.

[Gilrain]

It seems to me that a lot of this economic debate is silly. EL has a pretty well managed economy. Prices haven't changed much on most items (with some fluctuations, of course) since I disappeared 6 months ago. There's no massive, runaway inflation. There's no insane volatility. EL's pretty stable. I've seen *much* worse.

...

 

ty for stating this, i fully agree.

 

I only want to add one thing:

some people here discuss about the economy (if its broken or not) , and others just want a *different* economy. please separate those two things, otherwise the thread becomes ever more useless imho.

 

regards,

Gilrain

 

[skodarap]

I only want to add one thing:

some people here discuss about the economy (if its broken or not) , and others just want a *different* economy. please separate those two things, otherwise the thread becomes ever more useless imho.

 

Like it's not completely useless already, "broken economy" & "pk is dead" are to favorite b*tching topics of all players for a long long time already...why don't u all just give it a rest...I mean, there are dozens of threads, and maybe 5% of all ideas are original.

 

Why don't you all just give it a rest? I mean, come on, nothing's going to change just because you had moment of inspiration and came up with a 'brilliant' idea, that was most likely mentioned before. Just drop it and either quit or get used to it...more whining about broken economy won't help anyone...

 

Skod

[Dilly]

I only want to add one thing:

some people here discuss about the economy (if its broken or not) , and others just want a *different* economy. please separate those two things, otherwise the thread becomes ever more useless imho.

 

Like it's not completely useless already, "broken economy" & "pk is dead" are to favorite b*tching topics of all players for a long long time already...why don't u all just give it a rest...I mean, there are dozens of threads, and maybe 5% of all ideas are original.

 

Why don't you all just give it a rest? I mean, come on, nothing's going to change just because you had moment of inspiration and came up with a 'brilliant' idea, that was most likely mentioned before. Just drop it and either quit or get used to it...more whining about broken economy won't help anyone...

 

Skod

 

Amen brother.

 

PS.. i'm trying some tailoring and some ranging again lately.

 

<3 gc sinks!

[Burn]

Why don't you all just give it a rest? [....] Just drop it and either quit or get used to it...more whining about broken economy won't help anyone...

 

 

The beauty of a forum is that you actually have to click to read something. If you don't want to read it, don't click. Whining about people whining is a tad bit sadder than the whining itself. Clicking on stuff you don't want to read about is... well...

 

 

While I've never created, assisted, or moderated in a game, I have done online projects before where there were always crazy ideas, complaints, or whatnot being tossed up in the forums.

 

And in a lot of cases, they were determined to be just that, crazy ideas that wouldn't work or were poorly thought out. Majority of this thread, and yes, that includes even my posts, most likely fall into this pit.

 

However, as the project leader, I read such threads anyway. Not because of the crazy idea itself, but it does lead to other thinking. Take a small insignificant piece of an idea here or there, use it as a seed to come up with an idea that's not so crazy and might work. Let 'em keep duking it out on the forum over these crazy ideas, as someone just might say something that provides a seed to a different line of thinking that proves interesting. Inspiration comes from very unlikely sources.

 

I learned as that project leader that: (1) People telling others to shut up are the biggest problem in any such project (well, second to blatant rule violaters), (2) overzealous locking of discussions is detrimental to the project as a whole, no matter how crazy the idea or against it the devs are. There's still the possibility of seeds for ideas in that craziness, even if that seed leads to something entirely different than what was proposed (as it most likely will if the idea is considered crazy or detrimental to the project). As well, locks just because it's a "bad idea" is detrimental to community spirit.

 

Who's being harmed with such discussions? You? Don't click on it, and your problem with it is solved.

[skodarap]

Well, let's see:

 

http://www.eternal-lands.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=42555

http://www.eternal-lands.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=38982

http://www.eternal-lands.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=31324

http://www.eternal-lands.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=24796

http://www.eternal-lands.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=24656

http://www.eternal-lands.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=24624

 

and that's without this thread...and these are only the threads in general chat that have word "economy" in the title and also I just posted threads that were created after I joined forums, TBH I'm scared to go trough suggestion forums for similar threads. And all these were about "broken economy"...so please dear mister GoodDay2Die, go through these and you'll see some of them had pretty good ideas, and yet nothing has changed, or has changed and people are still complaining... and it's not whining for my part, since I do enjoy laughing at seeing same ideas posted over and over again, so this thread itself is a big joke to me TBH.

 

Enjoy!

 

Skod

[Burn]

You've said nothing.

 

(Copy/paste previous post here, since you didn't read it.)

 

As you can't possibly know (even devs themselves might not know) if perhaps something written, maybe even a bit off-topic perhaps, in one of those threads didn't spark an idea that might be or already is implemented, your response says nothing other than that you've never run a project that requires a lot of thinking/inspiration. People who run such a project, or write novels, or paint, are well aware that the slightest word or sentence can (even subconsciously) branch off into an entirely new line of thinking, and welcome such potential. Even if the basic gist of the discussion is repetitive, or way off the mark.

 

To (attempt to) stifle discussion based on "been there, done that" mentality breeds contempt, and reduces the potential for the imagination to possibly see something new. It provides absolutely nothing, and gives less.

 

 

Lack of imagination breeds nothing.

[Khalai]

To just shut up and do nothing is a very bad attitude and life opinion. If someone told you to pay double the income tax rate, would you just shut up and get on with it? Or would you discuss it? If we prohibit and mute people's opinions, we are doomed as a society. And this can be extented to this if you don't hear people out.

[skodarap]

To just shut up and do nothing is a very bad attitude and life opinion. If someone told you to pay double the income tax rate, would you just shut up and get on with it? Or would you discuss it? If we prohibit and mute people's opinions, we are doomed as a society. And this can be extented to this if you don't hear people out.

 

Lol comparing with this is a EPIC FAIL!...after all, all of this 14 pages before are talking about changing things, and not discussing the change itself...sure it's ok to talk about it, but talking about the same thing 100th time, well, if I was in ent's shoes I would ignore all of this out of spite if nothing else...